Jul
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Learning to Speak Thai
July 1, 2007 |
I am still trying to learn to speak Thai. And I am doing fairly well with the Pimsleur approach. Except that I can’t remember a single phrase except when listening to the CD’s.
Well it is not that bad. I can manage to ask what this cost, claim it’s to expensive and ask what that cost instead. And the shop assistant appear to understand what I am saying too most of the time. But fat chance I’ll understand the answer, as the said shop assistant definitely did not learn Thai by listening to the Pimsleur tapes. And answer with completely different words than I expect.
I got numbers down fairly well. So when I pay for my soda and snacks at “seven”, and the cute girl behind the counter ask for a sum of baht for the goods, I can manage to hand over the right amount.
Over all I find the Pimsleur approach to be working best for me. I am quite grammatically challenged, and there is not a mention of nouns, middle consonants, or live and dead syllables. The concept is to teach you a basic vocabulary, and put them together into sentences, by listening and repeating what is said on the tapes, with the aid of a male and female Thai, and an English speaking narrator. There is no book.
Each lesson last about 30 minutes. and you learn some new words and expressions in each lesson, while also repeating earlier lessons. In lesson 17, f.ex, you may suddenly be asked to say a sentence you learned back in lesson 8.
I have also picked up a couple of books. The thought was to supplement the Pimsleur approach with some traditional learning. This however requires school like discipline. You can ask any of my past teachers, and they will confirm that this is something I simply do not possess. So that is going fairly bad.
The two books I have is Benjawan Poomsan Becker’s “Thai for Beginners”, and “Colloquial Thai - The Complete Course for Beginners” by John Moore and Saowalak Rodchue. They both came with CD’s for listening excercises.
“Thai for Beginners” by Benjawan Poomsan Becker is attempting to teach you to speak, listen, read and write Thai in 270 pages. It starts with a guide to pronunciation, before launching chapter 1, where you are expected to learn no less than 35 words and expressions, all the numbers and your first thai script. Quite ambitious. When it comes to sentences, each sentence is written in English, transliterated Thai and Thai script.
It is really the transliterated Thai I have a beef with in this book. I can’t read it. The book uses “sound script” (i don’t know the English for that), so half the time I don’t know what word it it is. So it’s fairly useless for me. Another beef I have with it, is all the incomprehensible Latin it uses to explain things. Maybe someone can explain to me what a “Sonorant final syllable is?” But who cares. I want to learn Thai, not Latin. Latin is a language only spoken by the Vatican, and I am not a Catholic. I am not even christian.
“Colloquial Thai” by Moore and Rodchue on the other hand does not use “sound script” to transliterate. Every letter is a letter you can find in the English alphabet, thus enabling people like me to actually read the words, and memorize them. Instead it relies on the bundled CD’s to teach you pronunciation. It also has a lot more written exercises. It to want to teach how to read and write Thai. But I have skipped that so far.
The reasoning for skipping the reading and writing part, is simply this. A child first learns how to speak, reading and writing is only introduced when you have a certain vocabulary to write. So my approach right now is to stick with the Pimsleur course until I have exhausted what the 30 lessons can teach me. Then throw myself at the books. And I expect to learn a lot more and with greater ease ones I am in Thailand. Nan is a great teacher. And she is eager for me to learn. Even if she always get the giggles every time I try to speak. But then I get to rib her back whenever she fumbles up her own English 
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Comments
8 Comments so far
Very interesting - particularly as I have been thinking of trying such a course myself. Will look into the Pimsleur. Is Nan learning English from a book or CD course? Phil
Nan is learning by a book. It also came with a set of 3 cd’s for listening excercises. She is also using her dictionary a lot to memorize words. I don’t recall the name of the course.
But in due time, I will perhaps have her stick her head up in here and let us know what she thinks of it.
She is also reading simple childrens books to beef up her vocabulary. She is getting quite good at speaking and reading, but she struggles with writing. Her spelling is way off
Just some aditional rants
I guess most language course books are written by teachers. And of course teachers love to teach grammar for some reason. You are supposed to be able to analyze every sentence, and put each word in, according to certain rules.
All fine and dandy if they could just explain this in your normal language.
For me it looks like the books are written more to impress their colleagus in the teaching profession, than to actually help some poor student actually learn a foreign language.
It does not help me much of course, that I am learning a foreign labguage, with a foreign language book.
My native tongue is Norwegian, but being in Asia, language courses in that language is hard to come by, he he
I have the one in the middle, a total waist of money for me. I cant even keep up with the chapters. I find when Im listening to the CD she useually ends up 1 or 2 pages ahead of where I think I am.
Im going to try that roseta stone.
I’ll tell ya what,The girl I am seeing now is from Sakon Nakhon, she speaks Lao. I noticed that alot of people from Isaan often make comments about this one and that one speaking Lao. So I decided to investigate a little. I cant believe all the diolects spoken by the Thai people. I dont have an exact count but there are many variations.
Now I have to get a bunch of learn Lao books…UGH
Yup and in Surin and large parts of southern Isaan they speak Khmer, or “cambodia” as Nan says.
Nan speaks Khmer at home, and Lao elsewhere in Isaan, and Thai everywhere out of Isaan
Easy to know when she speaks Khmer, becose then she suddenly can speak with a sharp pronouced R, and she is the only person in Thailand, Thai and farang alike who can actually pronounce my name right.
There are actually more people that speak lao in Thailand than there are in Laos I have heard.
Anyway, I don’t think an Issan lao speaker can go to Laos and be understood well. As the dialects are different. Same with Khmer speakers, wich there are a million of in Thailand.
Oh ,and if you learn Lao instead of Thai, you will only be understood in Isaan. Thai is more or less understood universally…so stick with Thai. The kids learn it in school. Do not expect every elderly person to undertsand Thai though.
ANd there are 6 distinct languages spoken in Thailand, not counting Hill tribe minorities and
hundreds of different dialects where they may as well be their own languages. Or so I read once…cant rememeber where
I had the same “Thai for Beginners”, huh, who are they trying to kid, same same you guys, got to about chapter 3 and got bored trying to find out which page I was on!…my-b-li…after 4 years with the Mrs I can now sprinkle Laos liberally into my Thai, much to the amusement of all…haha!